Case studies of conservation plans that incorporate geodiversity

Abstract

Geodiversity has been used as a surrogate for biodiversity when species locations are unknown, and this utility can be extended to situations where species locations are in flux. Recently, scientists have designed conservation networks that aim to explicitly represent the range of geophysical environments, identifying a network of physical stages that could sustain biodiversity while allowing for change in species composition in response to climate change. Because there is no standard approach to designing such networks, we compiled 8 case studies illustrating a variety of ways scientists have approached the challenge. These studies show how geodiversity has been partitioned and used to develop site portfolios and connectivity designs; how geodiversity-based portfolios compare with those derived from species and communities; and how the selection and combination of variables influences the results. Collectively, they suggest 4 key steps when using geodiversity to augment traditional biodiversity-based conservation planning: create land units from species-relevant variables combined in an ecologically meaningful way; represent land units in a logical spatial configuration and integrate with species locations when possible; apply selection criteria to individual sites to ensure they are appropriate for conservation; and develop connectivity among sites to maintain movements and processes. With these considerations, conservationists can design more effective site portfolios to ensure the lasting conservation of biodiversity under a changing climate.

Scale‐dependent complementarity of climatic velocity and environmental diversity for identifying priority areas for conservation under climate change

“…Existing planning approaches often combine a focus on locations of high environmental diversity (potential microrefugia) with landscape‐level representation goals (Anderson, Clark, & Sheldon, ). In North America, such analyses have been used recently to help guide conservation easements and land acquisitions by national conservation organizations and local land trusts (Anderson et al., ). Our results suggest that such approaches focused on microrefugia and representation can be strengthened by adding information on macrorefugia identified by climatic velocity metrics (Figure ).…”

“…An approach in which conservation priorities are based on abiotic land classifications and associated environmental diversity metrics has been termed “Conserving Nature's Stage” (Anderson et al., ; Beier, Hunter, & Anderson, ; Comer et al., ; Lawler et al., ). This approach is motivated by several premises: (i) physical habitat types are effective coarse‐filter (nonspecies‐specific) surrogates for biological diversity; (ii) the influence of soils, geology, and topography in creating habitat variation is likely to persist as climates change; (iii) physical habitat data are more robust to uncertainty than metrics based on future climate projections, which vary dependent on the atmosphere‐ocean general circulation model (AOGCM) and emission scenario considered; and (iv) use of physical habitat data facilitates planning because these data are easier and cheaper to develop than spatiotemporal metrics (Beier, Hunter, et al., ).…”

Towards connecting biodiversity and geodiversity across scales with satellite remote sensing

“…A range of definitions of geodiversity exist; some include climate, whereas others explicitly exclude it (Gray, ; Lawler et al, ; Parks & Mulligan, ; Tukiainen, Bailey, Field, Kangas, & Hjort, ). In addition, geodiversity has commonly been treated categorically by thematically mapping climate, geology, geomorphology and soil features into land units (Anderson et al, ; Gray, ). To enable the use of continuous metrics in addition to ordinal and categorical ones, and to evaluate scaling relationships between biodiversity and geodiversity, we adopt the following definition of geodiversity: the set of abiotic processes and features of Earth's critical zone (lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere).…”

Is catchment geodiversity a useful surrogate of aquatic plant species richness?

“…This viewpoint can be considered through ‘Conserving Nature's Stage’ approach (CNS, Beier, Hunter, & Anderson, ; Lawler et al, ), which centres on the notion that conserving abiotic (geo‐)diversity is necessary for conserving biotic (bio‐) diversity (e.g. Anderson et al, ) and further ecosystem services (e.g. Alahuhta et al, ; Hjort et al, ).…”